Lesson 3

4 Ways to Advertise your Store

In this lesson, we will introduce 4 ways you can market your website and increase the number of sales you make. We have covered search engine optimization in another video lesson, so check that out if you want to discover how to get ranking in Google.

Let’s get started. And keep in mind that some of these methods are easier than the others. Start where you feel comfortable and with the methods that your budget and time constraints allow.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is hugely effective but best for people with an existing customer base. If you aren’t already collecting email addresses of your customers, start now! Using email marketing, you can showcase new products, offer specials or advertise upcoming sales. There are some laws that you need to follow when using email marketing, so make sure you check these out. Another email marketing tip is to check out free email marketing solutions such as Mail Chimp that allow you to create really attractive emails to send to your customers.

Pay Per Click Marketing.

With pay per click marketing, or PPC marketing for short, you can target your ads so that only the people who actually want your products will see your ads. The other cool thing about PPC ads is that, as the name suggests, you only pay when someone clicks your ad.

You can run PPC ads through Google or Facebook. How much it will cost you depends on how competitive your niche is.

Before you spend any money on PPC, I recommend you do some reading into how it works because if you don’t know what you are doing, you could end up losing a lot of money!

Blog or Forum Marketing

This is often misused, but can be very effective. The idea is to find blogs or forums that are related to the products that you sell, or the market audience that you sell your products to. For example, if you sell running shoes and other running equipment, you would find a running blog or a fitness forum and get involved with the community there by leaving helpful comments and occasionally link back to your store. Note the emphasis on occasionally! It’s very important to never just spam a blog or a forum. This usually either just gets ignored by readers, or makes you look bad. Neither of those are going to generate you any sales, so make sure you take the time to provide helpful or insightful advice.

Another tip is, when posting on forums, make the most of your forum signature and link back to your website.

Social Media Marketing

Using social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, you can reach out to and engage with an audience that is interested in your products. Social media marketing is mostly free, but it does require a bit of time to keep people interested. With social media marketing, the important thing to remember is that you need to inform and entertain your followers; don’t just promote your products as this is a real turn-off for people following you. You can promote your products from time to time, but make sure you apply the 80/20 rule – make informative and entertaining posts 80% of the time and promotional ones 20% of the time.

Here’s a quick recap on the four advertising options we have covered in this lesson:

Using email marketing, you can showcase new products and advertise sales. Check out free email marketing options such as Mail Chimp and ensure you comply with email marketing laws.

Our second method is pay per click marketing. Remember that while this is a very targeted option that can drive qualified buyers to your website, you need to do some research before you start.

Our third method is blog or forum marketing. The key here is to find the places that likely customers hang out, and become part of the community. Link back to your website in your forum signature.

Finally, we talked about social media marketing. Once you have a following on social media platforms, keep them engaged by informing or entertaining them.

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